The Heinlein Society announced today that the panel of judges for the
Robert A. Heinlein Award for
outstanding published work in hard science fiction or technical
writings inspiring
the human exploration of space has chosen Sir Arthur C. Clarke as the 2004
recipient. The
Award will be presented at
the Society’s annual dinner, held immediately following the Retro Hugos presentation on Friday night at this year’s Worldcon, Noreascon
4, Sep 2-6, in Boston, MA. Mr. Clarke, who in recent years has rarely left
Sri Lanka, where he makes his
home, is expected to attend if possible via real-time video.

This is the second year that The Heinlein Society has presented the
award, with last year’s inaugural recipients being Virginia Heinlein
and s-f author Michael Flynn. Some months later, Flynn replaced the
late Charles Sheffield on the panel of judges. The other judges are
Greg Bear, Joe
Haldeman, Yoji Kondo, Elizabeth Moon, Larry Niven,
Jerry Pournelle, Spider Robinson, Stanley Schmidt, Herb Gilliland, and
John Hill. For more information on the Heinlein Award and the
society’s annual dinner, contact THS at
secretary@heinleinsociety.org

Clarke, who along with the late Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov
were known as “The Big Three” during the Golden Age of science
fiction, is considered an avatar of the “hard” school of science
fiction exemplified in the works of Heinlein. “We could not be more
pleased with the selection of Sir Arthur to receive this year’s Robert
A. Heinlein Award”, said Society president David M. Silver, “as he has
consistently written the kind of visionary and readable speculative
fiction that Robert Heinlein introduced to the field in 1939.” Silver
continued, “Showing the CBS coverage of Robert Heinlein and Sir Arthur
with Walter Cronkite during the Apollo 11 landings has become a
fixture of the Society’s annual dinner, and we are very pleased that
Sir Arthur will be joining us by videoconference at this year’s dinner
as well.”

Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England on Dec. 16,
1917. He was an early member of the British Interplanetary Society and
served in the Royal Air Force during WWII. His October, 1945 article
in Wireless World, “Extra-Terrestrial Relays”, is widely credited with introducing the concept of world-wide communication through the use of
satellites in geostationary orbits. The International Astronomical
Union would later name this “The Clarke Orbit” in his honor.

His first professional sale was “Rescue Party”, appearing in the May
1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, the same magazine that had
launched Heinlein’s career seven years before. A prolific and
award-winning career would follow, including such classics of the
field as Childhood’s End (1953), “The Nine Billion Names of God”
(1953), Rendezvous with Rama (1973), and The Fountains of Paradise
(1979). His 1950 short story, "The Sentinel", would serve as the basis
for the 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, a widely praised and
universally known movie directed by the late Stanley Kubrick that
would become part of the popular culture. A novel by the same name,
and several sequels, would follow. Sir Arthur’s most recent title,
Time's Eye: Book One of a Time Odyssey, was co-written with Stephen
Baxter and released earlier this year by Del Rey.

The Heinlein
Society was founded by Virginia Heinlein on behalf of her husband, science
fiction author Robert Anson Heinlein, to "pay forward" the legacy of Robert A. Heinlein to future generations of "Heinlein's Children."